Two new reports examining the academic performance of the men’s and women’s college-basketball teams playing in this month’s NCAA Division I tournaments show that gaps persist between the academic achievement of white and black players and between male and female players.
The studies, conducted by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, were released yesterday for the men’s teams and today for the women’s teams. The reports analyze NCAA data on graduation and academic-performance rates for the teams competing in the men’s and women’s tournaments.
Over all, though there has been improvement, men’s teams continue to struggle with graduating their African-American players, the report said. A substantial gap persists between the graduation rates of white athletes and African-American athletes: Fifty-eight percent of the teams graduated 70 percent or more of their white players, compared with 32 percent of their African-American players.
“The continuing significant disparity between the academic success between African-American and white men’s basketball student-athletes is deeply troubling,” Richard Lapchick, director of the institute, said in a written statement. “The good news is that the gaps are narrowing slightly.”
Two-thirds of men’s teams in the tournament have academic-progress rates above the NCAA’s benchmark of 925, according to the report. (An academic-progress rate below 925 triggers penalties from the NCAA and indicates a program whose athletes are struggling academically.)
Female basketball players, meanwhile, perform much better in the classroom than their male counterparts, and the gap on women’s teams between the academic performance of white and African-American athletes is smaller, Mr. Lapchick said.
Ninety-seven percent of the teams in the women’s tournament graduated three-fifths or more of their players, compared with only 48 percent of the men’s teams. Three-quarters of the women’s teams had academic-progress rates of 950 or greater, compared with slightly more than a third of men’s teams.
The reports will soon be available on the institute’s Web site. —Libby Sander
